When You're Born to Run
by natural-blue-26
Summary: "The music of her laughter followed him in a teasing echo years after she had gone on from this life to the next ahead of him." AU series ending that still contains character death, so consider yourself warned. Done for 1sentence's Gamma table on LJ


**'When You're Born to Run, It's So Hard to Just Slow Down'**

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**Gamma Set of **_**1sentence**__ prompts on Livejornal_

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_**Author Note that's actually worth reading so you understand what's going on: **_Set in an alternate universe, due to either String Theory or the Ellimist (take your pick), in which KAA didn't decide that Rachel couldn't handle real life after the war. Tobias permanently becomes human, borrows the morphing cube momentarily, reacquires a bunch of morphs, and manages to get over the awkwardness of suddenly having a mother and living with Loren. (Jakes is only half as full of angst, and the rest of cannon is only slightly messed with.)

**Warnings: NOT a 'happily ever after' and includes character death.**

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_**THANK YOU SO MUCH to HotPinkCoffee for looking over **_

_**these for me first, and catching all my silly typos/homonyms.**_

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**Ring –** He asks her after a day they've spent as they started off together- miles above everything; she laughs and tells him she didn't need a ring to settle _that_.

**Hero –** She truthfully handles the hero-worship better publically then everyone but Marco, and he laughs (out of earshot) at every tabloid cover blaring a new shot of Rachel favoring the paparazzi with the fierce, pissed-off look he's seen her rehearsing in the mirror because, secretly, part of her thrives on the attention.

**Memory –** The dawn of their first daughter's birth Tobias gingerly holds the seven pounds nine ounces of **miracle** he's not sure he deserves or is fully prepared to care for; every spilt drop of blood he remembers losing on the battlefield is more than worth the perfection wrapped in his arms.

**Box –** Loading the carefully labeled cardboard boxes Rachel is taking away with her to college into the car is hard, but giving her one last kiss before she leaves for her fall semester, and he for a (hopefully short) visit with his Andalite "family" is worse.

**Run**- Years after the war ended Rachel is still full of restless energy, but with no enemy to focus it on, Tobias wakes early more mornings than not to find that his new wife has gotten up even earlier to jog off her night demons.

**Hurricane**- Making love to Rachel is akin to loving a hurricane, because even she has a calmness to offer him in the heart of her storm before it all starts up again.

**Wings**- Tobias knows she can tell the days he misses the freedom of the skies the most, and Rachel never needs to say anything before morphing along side him and taking to the sky.

**Cold**- He complains her toes are always frigid, so she boldly finds ways to make it up to him.

**Red**- At the end of a long day at work- the Andalite and human governments still aren't meshing as well as they could be ten years later- he opens the front door to be met by a trail of rose petals that meander teasingly up the stairs and into their candle-lit bedroom.

**Drink**- Tobias drinks in the sight of Rachel _his wife, it will never get old_ smirking challengingly at him from their bed dressed in one of her old morphing suits- tighter then it had been at sixteen in all the right places- and wonders just what he did to be the lucky bastard that deserves this.

**Midnight**- They keep each other up until one day rolls over to become another, and neither one is done celebrating their first anniversary just yet.

**Temptation**- She used to make the same coy eyes up at him in Cassie's barn when they were barely more then children trying to save the world, and Rachel eyes him the same way tonight across the room of the post-war fundraiser Cassie insisted they attend.

**View**- Tobias certainly never found anything to complain about the views he had high above the city, but the sight of Rachel chasing their young children around the backyard through the kitchen window is a million times more valuable.

**Music**-The music of her laughter followed him in a teasing echo years after she had gone on from this life to the next ahead of him.

**Silk**- The golden silk of Rachel's hair drew around him in a luxurious prison as she leaned down over him for a kiss.

**Cover**- The front of their "official" biographies were printed with a lone head shot of each of them respectfully on the front covers, but she specifically requested on the same photo- of the two of them together on their honeymoon- on the inside.

**Promise**- "I will wait for you," she sighed into a kiss the night before he left for God knew how long to visit Ax, "forever."

**Dream**- Tobias jerked awake; he had been in the middle of _the dream_ again- the one where Rachel died smiling at him on the dawn of the end of the war and the only thing he could do for her was _**watch**_.

**Candle**- Every birthday they celebrated together- every candle blown out, every wish sent up to whoever would listen- reminded him of the first single candle cup cake she had made for him when all he had to blow out the tiny flame was the wind from his wings.

**Talent**- Rachel had a God-given ability to walk through any situation life threw at her and stay clean _on the outside_; she told him his super power was the talent to clean and give light to her insides instead.

**Silence**- The first time their daughter slept through the night, the silence was so unnerving they both kept getting up to watch her breathe- just in case.

**Journey**- Their journey as a married couple was officially sealed and begun with a kiss, but their journey together started in an abandoned construction site years before.

**Fire**- Somehow the entire turkey caught fire their first Thanksgiving as a married couple; Tobias laughed quietly at Rachel surveying the smoking charred carcass before phoning Naomi to see if her dinner invitation was still extended.

**Strength**- Tobias always knew Rachel was strong- Marco hadn't called her Xena for any physical resemblance to Lucy Lawless, after all- but he hadn't realized just how much until she damn well almost squeezed his fingers **off** during the last two hour of labor for their first child's birth; after that he literally begged her to accept the epidural.

**Mask**- He would still find her, years after the war had ended, staring out the window at nothing in particular; when he wrapped his arms around her, she would turn and smile at him with false bravado in her eyes.

**Ice**- In his younger years, he always got a certain thrill out of the fact that all the other boys their age thought Rachel was an 'ice queen' because he knew she was saving her fire to share with him alone.

**Fall**- The both never let their son- born far too early and small for his age until he suddenly caught up in grade school- too far out from reach of their loving arms when he was learning how to walk; both their daughters (Rachel's children, through and through) started running before they could walk and never needed the support.

**Forgotten**- Tobias never forgot the freedom of the sky, but as he looked around the festively decorated living room crowded with the laughter of three generations from five families, he realized there was something much greater in love then the singular freedom of the thermals.

**Dance**- He crushed Rachel to him in the battle's aftermath and she dragged his body into hers with an equal enthusiasm and ferocity; their tongues danced against each other as they anchored themselves together using hands and feet in a choreography weak with relief.

**Body**- Tobias worshiped Rachel for much more then her flawless body, but he paid homage to that aspect as well.

**Sacred**- after years of constant warfare, college, aliens, and babies stealing time and energy from them, their brief moments of solitude became all the more precious.

**Farewells**- As fate (or either Crayak or the Ellimist) would have it they didn't have a chance to tell each other goodbye.

**World**- North Pole to rainforest, years in the future or fifty million years in the past, twenty thousand leagues under the sea or cresting the tops of thermals high above the earth, all they really needed for balance was each other.

**Formal**- Tobias was never overly fond of the formal fundraisers and other events the government and media liked to trot the retired Animorphs out for, but Rachel- particularly striking tonight in a scarlet gown that pulled eyes to her like a magnet- thrived here.

**Fever**- Even though it was him and she was running a hundred and two degree fever, Rachel still had trouble letting someone else take care of her.

**Laugh**- Rachel's laugh was loud, clear and invited everyone around her to share in her amusement; Tobias' were all the more treasured by her because his were quieter and more private.

**Lies**- He tells himself he can go on without her _because it's what she would have wanted_ - for their children, friends, family - but the first day he wakes to find her pillow cases has ceased to retain her scent, Tobias is forced to face the fallacy of his best intentions.

**Forever**- In the final act of their story, they lay side by side for eternity shielded by a marble slab bearing their names and the stylized image of a hawk and eagle soaring together for all time.

**Overwhelmed**- Rachel overwhelmed him the night they met as something more than simply fellow students passing in a crowded hallways - she as the confidant cover girl look-a-like and he as the quiet tag-along to her cousin - and her laugh, smile, presence, taste, _very essence_ continued to do so until the day she left him behind languish _alone_ in the mortal coil without a word of warning.

**Whisper**- "I love you, baby."

**Wait**- The time between Tobias reaching the altar at the front of the seated congregation and Rachel processing down the aisle on her father's arm crawled by in his rush of nerves - but the wait was more than worth it when she did.

**Talk**- Rachel warned everyone not to talk to their children in "baby talk" - like all the experts said - before each of them were born, but Tobias caught her melting under the charms of baby coos and smiles to babble right back at them more times then he could count.

**Search**- Years after Rachel's death, Tobias still sought and found her in the sunbeams that crept teasingly across his pillow, the free spirited dance of the cresting waves on the shore and, most obviously, in the curve of her daughters' smiles.

**Hope**- Tobias knew she hadn't left him forever - even at her cruelest Rachel was far too kind to him for that.

**Eclipse**- Rachel had been fierce in anger, cruel in vengeance, lost in confusion, and glowing in triumph, but all these emotions were overshadowed by simple, encompassing love when she looked at him over the head of their assembled extended family.

**Gravity**- Fate wove them together and a force stronger than death or gravity kept them that way.

**Highway**- The driver of the other car spun out on the slick, rain-covered road, only giving Rachel enough time to spin the wheel and ensure the oncoming SUV slammed into her side of the car instead of his.

**Unknown**- He couldn't ever be sure she died on impact like the official report read; the darkness of the thunderstorm and the slick red haze dripping over his face prevented him from watching what may have been Rachel's final living moments.

**Lock**- None of their friends- Jake with his somber insistence, Cassie with her motherly compassion and concern, or Marco with his take no crap humor- allowed Tobias to lock himself away in the aftermath of Rachel's passing; they all insisted Rachel wouldn't have wanted that for him.

**Breath**- Tobias breathed his last in the valley Toby's people had once lived with an easy smile on his face as a playful wind lovingly ruffled him graying hair to welcome him home.

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_Story title is taken from Steve Winwood's "Back in the High Life Again" - Lord knows why… The one line just seemed to fit. ;)_


End file.
